Children and Families Bill

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Monday 18th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 251. It would allow the Children’s Commissioner to conduct an investigation into the case of an individual child in specific circumstances which enable the commissioner to fulfil his or her primary purpose, which is defined as his or her strategic role. This principle, which underpins the existence of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, is accepted by everyone. This amendment seeks not to undermine it, but to aid the Children’s Commissioner in its pursuit.

We believe that the current proposed wording serves to undermine the ability of the commissioner to work strategically. Five years ago, Meltem Avcil, a 14 year-old girl, slashed her wrists when her bail application was turned down when she was detained at Yarl’s Wood detention centre. After self-harming, the child was handcuffed to a hospital bed. The then Children’s Commissioner for England, Al Aynsley-Green, investigated her case of self-harm. His report concluded that detaining the child for 80 days had amounted to inhuman treatment and recommended public policy changes to avoid such events occurring in the future. This is just one example of where the ability to investigate an individual case has advanced the strategic work of the Children’s Commissioner.

Another example is from Wales, where an investigation into specific cases of school exclusion led to the discovery that children were routinely informally excluded for prolonged periods in a manner that was against their interests. When this was debated in the Commons, the Minister, Edward Timpson, responded that the injunction on such investigations was to prevent the commissioner,

“becoming bogged down in individual casework at the expense of the OCC’s strategic role”.

That is an unsatisfactory response; it is clear that specific investigations can serve to aid a strategic approach.

Our amendment does not allow the commissioner carte blanche to engage in investigations or, indeed, make the commissioner feel under an obligation to investigate all individual cases which he or she receives. Instead, it is highly limiting and restricts investigations to when it is judged that they can genuinely advance the commissioner’s strategic role. Furthermore, the wording of our amendment also serves as a rebuttal to the suggestion that it would create a presumption that casework was part of the commissioner’s role and that it offered an alternate point of appeal to existing channels.

There also appears to be an element of confusion among Ministers. Mr Timpson said that it is “simply not possible” for the commissioner to investigate individual cases,

“without the commissioner’s strategic role being compromised”.

Nevertheless, in further discussion, he proceeded to point to other provisions in the Bill which allow the commissioner to,

“initiate a formal inquiry into the case of an individual child where he or she considers that it raises issues of public policy that are relevant to the other children under the separate inquiry function”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children and Families Bill Committee, 23/4/13; cols. 681-82.]

That is an apparent tacit admission that it is possible for the commissioner to investigate individual cases without compromising his strategic role. Unfortunately, the Bill makes it clear that that simply will not be possible in future. All of us accept the fundamental importance of the strategic role of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner yet it also seems obvious that this can be properly pursued only if the commissioner has the freedom fully to investigate individual cases in very specific instances. Our amendment seeks to find the appropriate wording to ensure that this can occur. I hope that the Minister will feel able to support our proposal, if not the exact wording of our amendment.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I have a third amendment in this group, to Schedule 6 and on a very different subject. It is proposed that the Children’s Rights Director, who is part of Ofsted, is to be transferred to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, taking the duties and powers of the office with him. Is that already happening? If it is, will the resources that are transferred balance with the duties and the costs of carrying out those duties in such a way as to make no material difference to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in respect of resources?

Adoption Agencies (Panel and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2012

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I will follow the same theme but I hope that I will not be repetitive. A great deal is going on in the area of adoption, whether it is the Norgrove review, the March action plan or the existence of the Select Committee on which I am very pleased to serve.

I want to draw attention to paragraph 78, which records the decision and has already been quoted by the chairman, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It ends with the sentence she has already quoted:

“We believe that the court’s detailed scrutiny of these cases should be sufficient”.

It does not say “is sufficient” or “is known to be sufficient”: it says “should be sufficient”. It is quite important that that sentence is conditioned. Indeed, the Explanatory Memorandum should have quoted paragraph 78 in full and not selected the middle sentence. In my view, the Explanatory Memorandum to this instrument has a tendency to short-cut.

Let us take the words “should be” and look at what this enormously comprehensive report, with more than 100 recommendations, said on the relationship between courts and local authorities in paragraphs 3.45 and 3.46. It is worth reading this into the record:

“Our recommendations are intended to restore the respective responsibilities of courts and local authorities”.

If I may interpose, the word “restore” is a quite strong use of language. It implies that something is not as it used to be, even if not quite that it has broken down. The report continues:

“But to change the law does not tackle the root cause of the difficulties. This stems we believe from a deep-rooted distrust of local authorities … This in turn fuels dissatisfaction on the part of local authorities with the courts, further damaging relationships.”

Paragraph 3.46 states:

“The result is that the relationship between local authorities and courts can verge on the dysfunctional. For the system to work better it is not acceptable for each group to sit on the sidelines and criticise the other.”

It may be right to have taken away one of the responsibilities of panels. It could be right to remove the second opinion which may be provided very helpfully either to local authorities or to courts which might need it. It may be right to make them face up to the need to work successfully together. Perhaps I may be allowed to say that that is the Norgrove motivation. But it seems very risky.

We know that the performance of local authorities is uneven, for some quite good reasons such as the size of the authority or the ethnic mix in the authority. Political persuasion may have entered into it at some stage. We also know that the performance of the courts is very uneven. Our committee has not yet received as much evidence on that as we will have done when we come back in the autumn. Indeed, the government literature—the action plan in March or the Explanatory Memorandum—is quite cautious about criticising the courts. It is perhaps overcautious in the balance between its opinions on local authorities and the courts.

However, Norgrove is very clear. I think that he is saying that the front-line troops—the local authorities, the IROs and the social workers, and the courts with the judges—need to be in the front line. They need to get together and to perform without being intervened upon by outside experts and interests, which may be right as a long-term objective. Certainly, one would hope to find relationships between local authorities and courts in general becoming much better than they apparently are if this review is to be believed—and I see no reason to doubt it.

However, the Government will have to watch what happens very carefully, because it is not self-evident that removing this second opinion, this ability to put things together to the benefit of both the local authority and the court, will enhance the process of adoption. Delay has been mentioned as a reason. The evidence for it does not stand up. The evidence for duplication is dependent on there being confidence that the ability to perform exists both in the local authorities and the courts. If it does not, the duplication argument does not stand up either.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for putting down this Motion today. She has enormous expertise in this area and, as I had anticipated, it has been very instructive listening to her speak not only about her past experience but about the work of the scrutiny committee. It has been interesting also to hear the details of the ongoing work of that committee that other noble Lords have been able to share.

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if other people in the Room have more expertise in this area than me; I see myself as being on a learning curve. However, I believe that we have so far failed to get the balance right between scrutiny and decision-making in adoption procedure, leading to unacceptable delays in the processing of applications for children to be adopted. As has been said today, this matter has been debated on many occasions over many years. It is also addressed in detail in the Family Justice Review report. As we have heard, the amended regulations before us today implement one small change in a much bigger set of recommendations contained in that report.

Having looked at those recommendations, we are persuaded that a one-stage process of scrutiny by either an adoption panel or the courts through a placement order should be sufficient to protect the interests of children and parents, with the emphasis being clearly on the primary interests of the child. However, the questions posed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, chime with several of our concerns.

The Explanatory Notes accompanying the regulations make it clear that this change is part of a larger package of legislative reform affecting adoption practices and that the Government will consult on these wider proposed changes. We look forward to participating in the consultation, and I would be grateful if the Minister could take this opportunity to update us on the timetable and scope of the planned consultation. Is it the intention, for example, that the outstanding recommendations from the Family Justice Review relating to adoption and the conclusions from the adoption scrutiny committee will be incorporated in the consultation?

This leads to the fundamental question, which the noble Baroness raised, of the timing of the proposals. We wonder at the wisdom of introducing this change to such an important piece of public policy on a seemingly piecemeal basis. Perhaps the Minister could clarify why the changes are being introduced now, when the scrutiny committee’s work is ongoing and when more radical issues relating to the role of local authorities and adoption panels are on the cards. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked powerfully why the scrutiny committee’s work was commissioned if it was to be pre-empted in this way as it now appears to be.

Given the sensitivities involved in dealing with adoption issues and the need to ensure that safeguarding the interests of the child is built into everything that we do, can the Minister confirm whether the changes, if introduced, will be monitored and reassessed over time? It is vital to ensure that child protection at this fundamental level is not being compromised. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.